TASVideos

Posted: 5/14/2008 3:15 AM

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Aqfaq

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6 stars!

Posted: 5/13/2008 5:48 PM

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Aqfaq

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I tried to translate some some spell names, but I still have no idea what they do. The spells seem to have no direct effect on anything and I believe I don't need them in the run, but nevertheless, it would be nice to know what they do. This is how they got translated by a machine: ひ-どん => "Terribly it is" ばよえ-ん => "It is to obtain" Heh, I have no clue...

mz wrote:

It sure gets repetitive after a while. :P

Yeah, the beginning is the most repetitive part, because I need to level-up and collect the little elephant item-drops. The next five minutes will have no fighting at all, so walking the hallways may also get repetitive. Anyway, I have hope for completing the game in less than 18 minutes. Thanks for verifying the WIP, mz.

Posted: 5/13/2008 10:10 AM

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Aqfaq

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Thanks, but I'm probably not interested doing the longer version. I'm not even sure if the short version is publishworthy. :P Anyway, despite having no intent to record this game for real, I have now done about 1/3 of a new movie with increased precision and slightly refined strategy. Could somebody please check that the movie works properly. It should end in level 3 after meeting a purple blob guy: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/272795015/m9.gmv

Posted: 5/10/2008 10:22 PM

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Aqfaq

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Ha, I managed to find a Japanese info page myself, afterall: http://suwa3.web.fc2.com/data-kan/kou/mdmado_memo.html I use machine translator, so some of the page contents remain obscure, but this page helped a lot nonetheless. For example, the page lists all the effects of the "random spell" and gives locations for important items. It also describes what are the results of all the item combinations. Combining items takes a lot of time though, so that is probably not useful for a speed movie. Edit: First test movie in 24 minutes: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/792483323/MadouMonogatariI-RouteDemonstration.gmv There are lots of mistakes and unoptimized playing, so under 19 minutes might be possible. Anyway, the amount of luck-manipulation in this movie is already quite high. The random spell always manages to produce a very desired effect, so not much level-uping is needed. Only a few battles are fought and huge portions of the game are skipped. Oh, the pineapple super bomb strategy fails, because the damage of those bombs is relative to the character level. So instead of pineapples, my underleveled character needs to manipulate the broom girls to drop "moonstones", which are items that produce same effects as the random spell. These are the fights that were fought: - All undesired random encounters were avoided. - 6 white-hair girls were encountered on purpose in levels 1-2. All of them were manipulated to drop "little elephant" items, which are good weapons. The early part of the game requires some level-uping to learn a necessary spell, so those white-hair girls are good for that. - 2 yellow blobs were encountered on purpose for level-up and money purposes. Money is needed in level 3 to buy a "wall creator" item. - The skeleton boss of level 2 was killed with two little elephants. - Later in the game, 6 broom girls were encountered and every one of them were forced to drop a moonstone item. - The giant bird boss of level 11 was killed with 1 moonstone, 1 random spell and 1 little elephant. - The final boss was defeated with 5 moonstones, 1 random spell, a few little elephants + some basic magic, because my planning failed. The little elephants did not produce as much damage to the final boss as I had expected. Anyway, it went quite well. There exists a minor trick that was used in this movie: Failing to escape the battle causes a short invulnerability period. This can be abused to avoid almost every enemy attack. There are at least two different endings. This movie gets a bad ending, because all the secondary goals were dismissed.

Posted: 5/10/2008 3:22 AM

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Aqfaq

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Thanks for the help guys. There are still some parts about the game that I don't quite understand, but I already developed a very good strategy to complete the game. There is a spell that does random effects, I call it the "random spell". It can be used only once per fight. Some of the ~20 different effects are made only to amuse the player, some even damage the player! But sometimes the random spell produces an istant death effect. This can be used to defeat all basic enemies in a single hit. Another powerful effect is the "elephant stomp", which causes 110 points of damage. The instant death effect does not work on bosses, but nevertheless the random spell can be used in boss fights to deliver one elephant stomp. Level 12 is the final level and consists solely of the final boss fight. This boss can be defeated with 5 super bomb items (which look like pineapples) plus one elephant stomp. One of the enemies (the broom girl) in level 11 drops those super bombs, but it is a rather rare item drop. Anyway, the RNG is so flexible that I believe 5 broom girls can be manipulated to appear and drop 5 super bombs without any loss of extra time. Level 11 has a boss too. It can be defeated with one super bomb plus one elephant stomp. So, maybe 6 super bombs need to be acquired in total. The super bomb has two alternative animations. They can be manipulated without any loss in time. The animations take about 9 seconds, but the other one is 14 frames longer. I think any movie for this game that uses more than one super bomb is better if it wastes those 14 frames to show both animations. It took me about 5 hours to complete the game. A good TAS time might be about ~20 minutes. I'm still not going to start this kind of TAS project seriously, but it is a funny game. I'll see what possibilities it offers. I have the in-game maps for each level, if somebody wants to see them.

paul_t wrote:

ドレミファミレド (Do Re Mi Fa Mi Re Do) are probably solfege syllables. Is there a musical puzzle somewhere in the game?

Yes. That was a combination to open a door. Without this translation, it would have taken me some time to find the correct solution, because I did not even know how many notes (7) the obvious seeming combination had.

Posted: 5/9/2008 10:43 PM

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Aqfaq

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maTO wrote:

3. DOREMIFAMIREDO

Oh, thanks maTO! That one helped a lot! :)

Posted: 5/9/2008 10:10 PM

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Aqfaq

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Thank you paul_t! Now I know that destroying those gems open certain doors. If it is ok to you, here are some more things I haven't been able to figure out. A message on a wall:

Another message:

Then there's this door that won't open:

Posted: 5/9/2008 4:02 PM

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Aqfaq

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Oh well, here are some parts that confuse me due to the language barrier. Any translation help is appreciated. :) The purpose of these gems is unknown to me:

The gems can be destroyed and the result is this:

Also, I can't tell what purpose this marking on the wall has:

Posted: 5/9/2008 12:13 AM

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Aqfaq

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Thank you for trying, Harmonik, but unfortunately that is a wrong game. It is not your fault, though. People often write inadequate game titles everywhere, me too. You gave me a patch to a SNES game called "Madou Monogatari: Hanamaru Daiyouchi Enji". The patch was labeled "Madou Monogatari". The exact title of the game I'm talking about is "Madou Monogatari I". It does not exist for SNES, as far as I can tell.

Posted: 5/8/2008 8:15 PM

Post subject: Madou Monogatari I (J)

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Aqfaq

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Madou Monogatari I is a first person dungeon crawler type of RPG, similar to Shining in the Darkness, but a little simpler. This game has only spells as weapons and they are cast by using different button combos (such as left-up-left-right). The Mega Drive port of Madou Monogatari I has real-time battle system, which means that fast controls produce fast spell casting. Together with very manipulatable randomness, I believe this would be a nice game to TAS. Probably not the basic fast-paced action, but an intriguing challenge to complete fast. I might try it at some point, because I like rerecording games where the movements need little optimization, but the available strategies are vast. My problem is that the game is Japanese and I can't quite understand everything that happens in the game. I have been able to find only one web page, but it does not give much info: http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/puyo/puyopuyo3.htm I wonder if some Japanese sites have any maps, walkthroughs or any other info about this game. Any search help would be appreciated from people who know Japanese. Thanks. So, the luck-manipulation in this game has huge possibilities. Avoiding encounters is easy to do even manually, because every forward step has so many possibilities for luck-manipulation. I have tested it briefly and I was able to avoid all encounters or get a few different encounters without losing any time, just by trying different button combinations on the useless frames. Every forward step has 10 frames that can be used for luck-manipulation. Turning left/right has 9 frames. Turnin 180 degrees has 17 frames. I have an idea of using the dungeon maps (the in-game ones, if nothing else is available) to plan the shortest route. Then I would plan where to encounter certain enemies to get some necessary item drops. Bot would be needed only to manipulate those few encounters. Everything else should be quite easy to do by hand. Well, I'm not sure if I do this game myself or not, but it is a funny idea for the future. So, any chance somebody could help me find some Japanese site with more info about this game? Alternatively, I could post screenshots or savestates for people to translate for me, if somebody is willing to do that kind of thing. :)

Posted: 5/8/2008 12:50 PM

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Aqfaq

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I studied the fading time a bit more and guess what! After the final Start button (before the game begins): The old published movie has 174 frames of screen fade time. By a lucky coincidence, the new best movie has only 173-frame screen fade! The hypothetical optimal movie, which starts the game as fast as possible, has 174-frame screen fade! In order to achieve 173-frame fading time, the optimal movie needs to idle 1 frame, negating the gain. :D So, you could say that in a sense our new movie plays the screen fading part faster than optimally. LOL? But not quite... If I'm right, the winning 10-frame combination would need 171-frame fading time. By testing manually, I know that this kind of fade time is possible. So, ok, I'm willing to run some more movies, because I know for sure that there is still a (very small) chance for an improvement. The bot can run with the same old configuration. I will pick up the .save file at some point, if it gets tossed around here. Thanks.

DarkKobold wrote:

You only set frame skip to 50?!?! Man. How slow is your computer?

I used frame skip 4000 first, but I wanted to do other stuff with the computer too, so I changed it to 50 at some point. If I had let the computer run without touching it, it would have worked much faster.

Posted: 5/8/2008 12:27 AM

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Aqfaq

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The bot has finished running the 9-frame luck-manipulation patterns. There were 401 328 files to run. (I'm not sure if that was all of the 9-frame movies, but as mentioned earlier, that is all the generator generated for me.) It took about 24 hours to run all those movies with frame skip set to 50. There are 17,8 MB of .txt logs, if somebody wants to analyze them. :) Here are the not-so-exciting results: 83 movies got coordinates {12, 4}. I believe this coordinate might be a good shot for a console speedrun, since it is seen "often". (Oh, but that might not be the case, when more frames are wasted in the beginning.) Coordinates {10, 4} were achieved once. It was movie 335068. Rather strange how there was only one of these coordinates so far, of all the 1-9 frame luck-manipulation patterns. All these 84 movies (with Y-coordinate: 4) require 12 frames of walking and complete the game around 607 frames at best. That is not a good time anymore. Two movies managed to get 597 frames completion time with coordinates {11, 5}. These two movies were 238455.gmv and 323348.gmv. There were four other movies that got coordinates {11, 5}, but those four had 1 frame more fade time, thus achieving 598 completion time. That is not a promising result. With inductive reasoning, I would believe that some of the 10-frame movies will complete the game in 598 frames and some in 599 frames, but I can't see the possibility for 595 there, maybe not even 596. But who knows before the 10-frame movies are tested... To achieve 595 frames, some of the 10-frame combinations must achieve 3 frames less fade time than the winning 8-frame combination got. Maybe it's not possible. An awfully lot of the movies get 0,0,0 and are not reported as FAILED. I suppose all of those are the movies that press Start immediately after Left or Right and the game fails to begin. I would strongly recommend reducing the tested patterns so that there's always an idle frame before the start button. But ofcourse, as you (gia) mentioned, it is not a bad thing to run extra movies. There's just so many of them... I would like to let other people run the bot for now, if they want to. I've already run more than 520 000 movies. It was fun and I learned new things. I'll consider running bots for other games in the future, if opportunities arise. Oh well, if the ball gets rolling with the 10-frame movies here, then I might run some of those just for fun. In conclusion, the project has been a huge success already! Congratulations to gia for a great TAS achievement! Also, many thanks to people who joined the happy discussion and offered help. I would not hurry with the submission-package yet. I also still don't care who is the "author" of the movie, but I bet gia did the hardest work to achieve it. P.S. The 401 328 movie files take some disk space, but I'll keep them available a few months, if somebody wants to see a specific file. Same goes for the bot logs.

Posted: 5/7/2008 1:02 AM

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Aqfaq

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If gia or anybody is planning to develop the playback bot further, here is one idea: Currently, with long movies, it takes a lot of time to playback the movies, so a good addition would be savestate support. Even our short King's Bounty movie might have benefited, if each attempt would have begun from a savestate instead of the beginning of the movie. With longer movies, beginning from a savestate becomes more relevant. I think these tools have lots of potential. If the movie generator can be adjusted to produce any kind of input patterns, then it (together with the playback bot) might become a killer tool for luck-manipulation purposes in many games.

Posted: 5/6/2008 11:23 PM

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Aqfaq

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Thanks again. Well, I'll just run these 9-frame movies, even though the 400 000 seems a bit low number for them. I have lots of disk space still available, so that is not the problem. Is there a limit to how many files can be in the same folder? Well, if you, alden, want to try it out, just begin with the 10-frame configuration. Generate as many files as you like and then pass the generator.save file to the next person, whoever wants to pick it up. Edit: Oh, feel free to ask, if you have any questions. It took me some time to understand this tool too. :) Edit-2: If you have sound enabled on the playback bot, it should sound something like this: www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/giabotsound.mp3

Posted: 5/6/2008 10:52 PM

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Aqfaq

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Nope, I used the old one. Edit: Yes, these files that I generated have left/right buttons too.

Posted: 5/6/2008 10:43 PM

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Aqfaq

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I generated all the 9-frame movies. It was only slightly over 400 000 files. Can that be correct? I could let the bot run all those easily.

Posted: 5/6/2008 8:55 PM

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Aqfaq

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Larkin wrote:

Is it possibly "A fistful of bucks"?

Oh, that must be the game! Thanks! I need to try it with an emulator someday, just to get some flashbacks from childhood.

Posted: 5/6/2008 3:25 PM

Post subject: Custom Frame Advance (Feature Request)

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Aqfaq

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Hi! Any chance Gens (or any other emulator) would get an option to set the number of frames the frame advance button advances each step? The default in all emulators has always been 1 frame, but for game engines that run at 30 fps, frame advancing 2 frames at a time would make recording much easier. Also, think about those Prince of Persia type games that have long animations and allow input only every 16 frames or so. Then there are dungeon crawler RPGs where each step takes 1 frame to perform, but the next 7 frames allow no input. The TASer would not like to advance 7/8 of a multihour movie by hand, if it could be done automatically. Oh, now I just got another idea for frame advance customization: An option to set the frame advance "autoadvance" lag frames (those that Gens displays in red). It could be developed even further: Autoadvance frame, if certain memory conditions are met. Autoadvance might also require this option: Hold input while autoadvancing or use no input while autoadvancing. I know scripting or macro support might make this kind of stuff useless, but I still think customizable frame advance would be a good emulator feature.

Posted: 5/6/2008 2:43 PM

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Aqfaq

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I thought this might not be interesting, but the Tempest Sword speeds up things a lot. Funny graphics mess there with the sword indeed. Maybe it was supposed to be that way?

Posted: 5/6/2008 2:22 PM

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Aqfaq

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AnS wrote:

I'm positive that's because the game keeps placing sceptre on wrong positions (where there's a building on the map), thus calling RNG many times after checking its position.

Then that means the fade time is not directly related to timing of the final luck-manipulation input, so it is indeed possible that 9-frame or 10-frame iterations produce faster result! So, gia, would you like to organize the task so that you provide us with bots set to work a predefined segment of 100 000 movies? People could then download one of your differently configured bots and just run the bot and report the results. People would not need to configure anything, so it would stay organized as long as people inform what segment they downloaded.

Posted: 5/5/2008 10:39 PM

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Aqfaq

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alden wrote:

Now you need to figure out how to beat the game without even starting it :)

This brings up an "interesting" problem... What is your completion time, if you never start the game? Is it infinite frames or 0 frames or what? Like, when the other guys shout "Last guy on the hill is a fag!" and one of the guys never runs to the hill, is he a fag or not? (When I was a child, the guys never understood this problem and told me I was a fag anyway.)

Posted: 5/5/2008 10:22 PM

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Aqfaq

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There seems to be variation in the fading time after the character selection screen. I never noticed it before. I tested it briefly and it seems that even with 2 frames of more time wasted in the character selection screen can result in 1 frame faster overall time, so there is sometimes at least 3 frames difference in the fading time! This means that at least all 9-frame and 10-frame iterations need to be tested in order to find/verify the optimal movie. Because of the varying fade time, I can't tell what is the exact maximum amount of luck-manipulation that is allowed. Anyway, here are some figures I get when I think about the game, not considering the 1-3 (?) frame fluctuation caused by the fade screen: The hypothetical optimal movie (which starts the game as fast as possible and searches immediately) takes 588 frames. The hypothetical optimal movie fails, so the real optimal movie is at least 589 frames. It takes 9 frames to walk to the adjacent location, so any movie that has coordinates {11,4} or {11,6} take at least 598 frames. Current record is 596 frames. So, the only possible sceptre location that can save time anymore is the one we have now, {11,5}. The improvement happens, if the same manipulation can be achieved with more input, but less fade time. I don't know exactly what determines the fade time, so the 596 might be the optimal time or not. If we assume that the fade time can have 3 frames of variation, then the movie might get 1 or 2 frames faster after the 9-frame and 10-frame iterations are tested. After that, I see no possibilities for any improvements and even the fade time speculation is strongly hypothetical already. I'm probably not going to use my computer for the bot anymore, but it would be nice if someone could do that. Well, ok, I might contribute a bit more and run another 100 000 movies, but not more. In conclusion, I would bet that the movie is now 0-2 frames from perfect. Oh, but there are some things that are not tested at all, like 3-player input and reset button, so anything is possible.

Posted: 5/5/2008 1:06 PM

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Aqfaq

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Another session is over with a result that might be optimal! Min/max frames: 8 Files to playback: 118 832 Bot running time: 5 hours Winning movie number: 40853 Skill level: 1/4 (easiest) Sceptre location: 11,5 (optimal, no walking required) Movie lenght: 596 frames Improvement over the current published movie: 14 frames Download: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/251714935/40853-finished.gmv Edit: Movie number 95409 achieved same lenght with skill level 3/4, so this is a bit better movie: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1382406997/95409-hard.gmv Edit-2:

gia wrote:

Finished, 1716 remains best: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1526553404/1716.gmv

That movie completed the game in 605 frames. It was indeed strange how often the coordinates 12,4 were received.

Posted: 5/5/2008 5:13 AM

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Aqfaq

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Hahah, looks like we are both making little mistakes. I was wrong when I said my hex-edited movie desynched. It synchs fine, so the improvement is now actually 5 frames. Compared to the old record, the new movie has 1 frame more luck-manipulation in the logo screen at frame 232 6 frames less luck-manipulation in the character selection 2 frames less luck-manipulation in the skill level selection 1 frame less black screen before the game starts - this is surprising! 3 frames more walking Total: 5 frames faster input Interestingly, there is one frame of lag in the end, after the final input is delivered. This lag frame was not present in the old record. So even though the input is now 5 frames faster, the AVI would be only 4 frames faster. If the hardest skill level is not required, then the new movie is 16 frames from the hypothetical perfect movie, since we wasted 12 frames in the walking and 4 frames in the luck-manipulation. In other words, the 21-frame max limit for any-skill movies got down to 16 frames. I suppose this rules out the possibility for 16-frame idle at frame 339, but otherwise the possible input variations stay the same. How many iterations does that make then with max 16 frames? Ok, so you run the bot from 1 to 7 frames. I'll run the bot with min/max 8 frames now.

Posted: 5/5/2008 1:18 AM

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Aqfaq

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Hehe, yeah... Oh, gia, there's something going on, but I have not time to figure it out right now. The optimal base input file presses start at frame 63. The winning movie presses start at frame 64, even though "startinsertingblanksatframe" was 100. Even more interesting is the fact that hex-editing the new movie to press start at frame 63 causes desynch at the character selection screen. So, idle frames before the first start button (at frame 63) seem to have some meaning afterall! Well, I'll look into it more carefully later. It is great to have the movie improved already, because now the possibilities have been reduced, so that not so huge iterations need to be tested. :)

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